What can you do with an old dead computer? A family member asked me how to dispose of his ancient no-longer-functioning Dell desktop PC. The good news is that it’s easy, and usually free, to recycle unwanted electronics, whether it’s a computer or cell phone, television or batteries. Here’s an generalized version of what I told him:

• Contact your city office. My own town has a free program for recycling electronics; you can drop equipment off at their transfer station on Saturday mornings. Your town may offer a similar program.

• Watch for fliers or notices for recycling programs. Local organizations are always running “drop your recycling off for free” programs, sometimes as fundraisers. (I guess they sell the junk equipment as scrap metal.)

• Electronics and computer stores can help. Many will take old electronics, whether they’ve sold them or not. Best Buy, for example, has a program described here.

• Some general retailers have recycling programs. Walmart, for example, will take some items for free, and will charge to recycle other items, as described here.

• Check with the product’s manufacturer. Dell, for example, will pay the postage for you to ship the old Dell-branded equipment back to them for recycling, as described here.

Sure, it’s easy to toss the electronics into the trash, but please don’t. It’s irresponsible to put that type of equipment (with its valuable metals and toxic waste) into our landfills. For just a little bit of effort, you can dispose of unwanted electronics safely.

If you have other ideas, please leave a comment on this blog.

If you buy lots of stuff from Amazon.com — as I do — you might be fooled by receiving a message like the one below. It certainly looks real, as it came from a legitimate-looking email address. However, a real Amazon order confirmation lists exactly what you ordered. This scam message does not.

Also, a real Amazon.com order confirmation would not have been sent as a bcc to one of our info@ email addresses. Or have entered the mail stream via an unsecured SMTP relay server belonging to a law firm in Minneapolis.

In the email, the line labeled “ORDER DETAILS” is a link that goes to an online store selling “adult supplements,” if you know what I mean. I’ve seen other messages like this that bring you to a fake Amazon.com login screen, where you might be tricked into entering your username and password. That’s bad, bad, bad.

That is the only bogus link in the message. All the other links actually go to Amazon.com

Be very careful about clicking links in email messages, even if they appear to be from a legitimate sender.

From: “email hidden; JavaScript is required”
Date: March 16, 2010 2:38:37 PM PDT
To: Subject: Amazon.com – Your Confirmation (464-18147-30235)

Dear Customer,

Your order has been successfully confirmed. For your reference, here`s a summary of your order:

You just confirmed order #592-60631-10566

Status: CONFIRMED
_____________________________________________________________________

ORDER DETAILS
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
_____________________________________________________________________

Because you only pay for items when we ship them to you, you won`t be charged for any items that you cancel.

Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!

———————————————————————
Amazon.com
Earth`s Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com
———————————————————————

@bzmedia.com>@amazon.com>

SPTechCon San Francisco (Feb. 10-12) had more than 1,000 registrants. That made the conference nearly twice the size of our previous SPTechCon San Francisco, held in January 2009.

Attendees were drawn to SPTechCon’s outstanding faculty. While many attendees focused on SPTechCon’s classes and workshops about SharePoint 2010, many others went to classes on older versions of Microsoft’s collaboration platform.

Not only did we have huge attendance, but the show floor sold out twice. All our booths and sponsorships were reserved by November 2009 – but we able to secure additional expo space from the Hyatt Burlingame. That extra space sold out fast. The final count was a record 52 exhibitors!

Kent Beck and Ken Pugh are smart, smart fellows. Listening to them discuss the art and science of software development is guaranteed to excite the neurons… and leave you feeling supercharged with energy and ideas.

Both Kent (pictured) and Ken were keynote speakers at this week’s Enterprise Software Development Conference. As the conference chair, I had the honor of introducing their talks, of course – and then also got to hang around and chat with them afterwards.

Kent’s talk focused on what he calls responsive design. That’s a way of characterizing software changes, such as requests for implementing new features or functions. Kent has found a way of classifying software changes (which might be at a detailed level, like a class or a method, or at a higher level, like a module or complete application) into four groups:

• If you know where your changes are going and how to get there, easy changes can be implemented in direct “leaps,” while more complex changes might require a more resource-intensive “parallel” approach.

• If you don’t know how to visualize how to implement the changes directly, you may need to use “stepping stones” to inch your way to where you can gain greater visibility, or you may need to use “simplification” to eliminate requirements until the path becomes clear.

Sound simple? When you hear Kent speak, of course, everything seems completely obvious, because his work is so thorough and grounded in the real world. In reality, of course, his classification scheme is more complex and nuanced.

Why is this important? Each of these four approaches (leap, parallel, stepping stone, simplification) requires a different process to handle — and each of those processes can be surprising consistent, and therefore can be practiced and refined. If you can classify the requirements for a software change or feature implementation into one of those four categories, that can help you do a better job of estimating the project, marshalling the right resources and get the project off to a good start.

The talk was eye-opening. It’s a rare treat to learn from genuine Big Thinkers like Kent Beck. Shortly, I’ll share some comments about Ken Pugh’s discussion about the Dreaded Chasm of Chaos.

United Business Media is relaunching COMDEX as a virtual trade show.

This is hysterically funny. Laugh-out-loud funny. Roll-on-the-floor funny. The benefits of attending COMDEX were talking to people, seeing and touching new products, talking to people, making deals with both exhibitors and other attendees, talking to people, discovering new companies, and talking to people.

While much of the business at COMDEX was “formal” on the show floor, just as much (or more) was casual and informal, in bars, restaurants, nightclubs, cab lines, black-jack tables, hotel lobbies, hallways, hospitality suites and so-on.

COMDEX is where business got done, because everyone you wanted to do business with was at COMDEX.

Sorry, but a virtual trade show, where you get to view simulated booths from the isolation of your cubicle, isn’t what huge industry get-togethers like COMDEX are all about.

(PS: Grand Hall of Masters??????)

Here’s the news — see the press release here.

Leading virtual event provider takes COMDEX back to its roots

UBM, the leading global provider of business media and marketing services, is relaunching COMDEX as a virtual event which will take place November 16-17, 2010.

At its peak COMDEX was the world’s most famous tradeshow, attracting more than 200,000 visitors and 2,300 IT industry exhibitors from around the world to Las Vegas before the show closed its doors in 2003. UBM acquired the COMDEX brand as part of its acquisition of MediaLive International Inc in 2006.

The virtual COMDEX event is being launched by UBM’s Everything Channel business, a leader in technology sales channel media and services. Everything Channel is going back to the original 1979 concept of an event designed exclusively for the technology sales channel called “Computer Dealer Exhibition”. Everything Channel’s virtual COMDEX will include:

* Grand Hall of Masters will showcase the event’s keynote speakers
* The Conference Hall will offer technical, product, channel and business conference tracks
* The Exhibit Hall will feature booths and pavilions from technology vendors
* Hospitality Suites for private meetings, briefings and cocktail parties
* The Media Room will host registered journalists and industry analysts
* CRN Test Center will offer live reviews and demos of leading-edge technology solutions

For more information on and to register for Everything Channel’s COMDEX event, go here: www.COMDEXvirtual.com.

Virtual events are specially created online digital environments in which participants interact with online content or with other online participants as they would at live, face to face events. In 2009 UBM ran a total of 38 virtual events of different types, including careers fairs, technical seminars, tradeshows, conferences and sales meetings. For more information on UBM’s virtual events in 2010 go here: http://www.ubmstudios.com/featured-events/upcoming-events/.

Everything Channel’s virtual COMDEX event will be built by UBM Studios, UBM’s creative and strategic marketing business which specialises in building next-generation virtual media business solutions which connect global audiences through a robust virtual event environment with an intuitive user interface and appealing visuals. To find out more about the capabilities of UBM Studios virtual events go here: http://www.ubmstudios.com/virtual-product-suite/.

Separately, UBM Studios has signed a strategic alliance agreement with InXpo, the largest virtual event technology provider, to deliver next generation virtual business solutions using the InXpo Virtual Events Platform. As its first global media licensee, UBM Studios will use the InXpo platform to support the delivery of UBM virtual events at scale and on a worldwide basis.

David Levin, CEO of UBM said:

“The original COMDEX died because it stopped serving its core customers. We are giving COMDEX a future by going back to its past. Our virtual COMDEX is focused on serving the IT channel, Value Added Resellers, ISVs and all those people and businesses who make up the IT distribution system. Virtual COMDEX works right alongside and complements the other products and services we provide for the Channel and for the wider technology industry.”

“We are a leader in the virtual event market – we ran 38 virtual events in 2009. Through our UBM Studios business this year we’ll run many more virtual tradeshows, recruitment events and in-house training sessions for industries as diverse as construction, shipping and healthcare.”

“We run virtual events in tandem with live, in person events like tradeshows: we think we have a great opportunity to take advantage of the complementarity between online and offline events. Virtual events are emerging as a great, cost effective way of bringing customers together to engage and interact with branded business content and as well as a means of building professional business community interaction. These capabilities are key to delivering the measurable ROI that our customers are looking for.”